Inca architecture

Inca architecture is the most significant pre-Columbian architecture in South America. The Incas inherited an architectural legacy from Tiwanaku, founded in the 2nd century B.C.E. in present-day Bolivia. A core characteristic of the architectural style was to use the topography and existing materials of the land as part of the design. The capital of the Inca empire, Cuzco, still contains many fine examples of Inca architecture, although many walls of Inca masonry have been incorporated into Spanish Colonial structures. The famous royal estate of Machu Picchu (Machu Pikchu) is a surviving example of Inca architecture. Other significant sites include Sacsayhuamán and Ollantaytambo. The Incas also developed an extensive road system spanning most of the western length of the continent and placed their distinctive architecture along the way, thereby visually asserting their imperial rule along the frontier.

Characteristics

Inca buildings were made out of fieldstones or semi-worked stone blocks and dirt set in mortar; adobe walls were also quite common, usually laid over stone foundations. The material used in the Inca buildings depended on the region, for instance, in the coast they used large rectangular adobe blocks while in the Andes they used local stones.
The most common shape in Inca architecture was the rectangular building without any internal walls and roofed with wooden beams and thatch. There were several variations of this basic design, including gabled roofs, rooms with one or two of the long sides opened and rooms that shared a long wall. Rectangular buildings were used for quite different functions in almost all Inca buildings, from humble houses to palaces and temples. Even so, there are some examples of curved walls on Inca buildings, mostly in regions outside the central area of Peru. Two-story buildings were infrequent; when they were built the second floor was accessed from the outside via a stairway or high terrain rather than from the first floor. Wall apertures, including doors, niches and windows, usually had a trapezoidal shape; they could be fitted with double or triple jambs as a form of ornamentation. Other kinds of decoration were scarce; some walls were painted or adorned with metal plaques, in rare cases walls were sculpted with small animals or geometric patterns.

The most common composite form in Inca architecture was the ''kancha'', a rectangular enclosure housing three or more rectangular buildings placed symmetrically around a central courtyard. ''Kancha'' units served widely different purposes as they formed the basis of simple dwellings as well as of temples and palaces; furthermore, several ''kancha'' could be grouped together to form blocks in Inca settlements. A testimony of the importance of these compounds in Inca architecture is that the central part of the Inca capital of Cusco consisted of large ''kancha'', including Qurikancha and the Inca palaces. The best preserved examples of ''kancha'' are found at Ollantaytambo, an Inca settlement located along the Urubamba River.

Inca architecture is widely known for its fine masonry, which features precisely cut and shaped stones closely fitted without mortar (" dry"). However, despite this fame, most Inca buildings were actually made out of fieldstone and adobe as described above. In the 1940s, American archaeologist John H. Rowe classified Inca fine masonry in two types: coursed, which features rectangular shaped stones, and polygonal, which features blocks of irregular shape. Forty years later, Peruvian architect Santiago Agurto established four subtypes by dividing the categories identified by Rowe:
* Cellular polygonal masonry: with small blocks
* Ashlar polygonal masonry: with very large stones
* Encased coursed masonry: in which stone blocks are not aligned
* Sedimentary coursed masonry: in which stones are laid out in horizontal rows (i.e., ashlars)
The first two types were used on important buildings or perimeter walls while the last two were employed mostly on terrace walls and river canalization.

According to Graziano Gasparini and Luise Margolies, Inca stonemasonry was inspired by the architecture of Tiwanaku, an archaeological site in modern Bolivia built several centuries before the Inca Empire. They argue that according to ethnohistorical accounts the Incas were impressed by these monuments and employed large numbers of stoneworkers from nearby regions in the construction of their own buildings. In addition to these references, they also identified some formal similarities between Tiwanaku and Inca architecture including the use of cut and polished stone blocks, as well as of double jambs. A problem with this hypothesis is the question of how expertise was preserved in the three hundred years between the collapse of Tiwanaku and the appearance of the Inca Empire and its architecture. As a solution, John Hyslop has argued that the Tiahuanaco stonemasonry tradition was preserved in the Lake Titicaca region in sites such as Tanqa Tanqa, which features walls resembling Inca polygonal masonry.

A second major influence on Inca architecture came from the Wari culture, a civilization contemporary to Tiwanaku. According to Ann Kendall, the Huari introduced their tradition of building rectangular enclosures in the Cusco region, which formed a model for the development of the Inca ''kancha''. There is evidence that such traditions were preserved in the Cusco region after the decline of the Wari as is attested by the enclosures found at sites such as Choquequirao (Chuqi K'iraw), 28 kilometers southeast of the Inca capital.

Masonry and construction methods

Extraordinary manpower would have been necessary for large construction projects. The Inca Empire employed a system of tribute to the Inca government in the form of labor, called Mit'a that required all males between 15-50 to work on large public construction projects. Hyslop comments that the 'secret' to the production of fine Inca masonry “…was the social organization necessary to maintain the great numbers of people creating such energy-consuming monuments.” Spanish Chronicler Pedro Cieza De Leon wrote that Pachacuti "ordered 20,000 men sent in from the provinces" for the construction of Sacsayhuamán.

Water engineer Ken Wright estimates that 60 percent of the Inca construction effort was underground. The Inca built their cities with locally available materials, usually including limestone or granite. To cut these hard rocks the Inca used stone, bronze or copper tools, usually splitting the stones along natural fracture lines.

The stones were moved by teams of men pulling with ropes, as shown in the drawings of chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Cieza De Leon also writes "4000 of them quarried and cut the stones; 6000 hauled them with great cables of leather and hemp." Similar ropes used on Incan suspension bridges were made with '' ichu'' grass. Small ropes of these materials have been shown to support a load of 4000lbs, and larger ropes may have been able to hold up to 50,000lbs. The stones were rolled to their positions using wooden beams on earth ramps. An unfinished ''chullpa'' in Sillustani still has a ramp in place. Father Cobo saw Incan builders using a similar ramp during the construction of the Cusco Cathedral.

It is speculated that stones were initially fit using hammerstones. The stones would then be lifted into place with a rope sling tied to bosses near the stone's base, many of which can still be seen on Incan walls. Adjustments could have been performed by eye alone or aided by the use of a compressible dust, such as the dried sap of the ''llawlli'' plant (''Barnadesia horrida

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